Oh, user friendly, here are some suggestions:
game starting w/o errors/crashes
game not corrupting savegames
more than one savegame / autosave / quit w/o saving
all keys and mouse buttons bindable
no fps drops
no glitches
moving vehicles
don't be catapulted in the air
objects not falling through the ground
terrain tool working as intended
and so on
Don't get me wrong, I love this game. One complete walkthrough and 460h of play time should reveal that. But it necessarilly doesn't mean to be satisfied with the release of the game and the game state at all:
or
and many more...

No, I said that release 1.0 is technically a beta.
And no, they can''t be happy with a version full of minor and major bugs that were reported long time ago.
No big changes? Read that: Astroneer Development Roadmap

I started playing Atsroneer with version 0.10.2.0. After a few days I discovered all gamebreaking bugs and posted them here. No problem, it was an alpha and EA. Version 0.10.5.0 came with no bugfixes but this Terrain 2.0 test. Again no problen, they want to test out the new feature before combining it with the core game. So I supposed we'll get a version 0.10.x.0 with that. But then they announced the Release and I was very angry. All these bugs, Terrain 2.0 and new features with new bugs this must become desastrous. They gonna skip the beta! Really? No, they didn't. Technically Release V1.0 is a beta. So, why they call it Release? It's so easy, they raised the game price before launch at steam. It's now an fullprice game at beta status.
To answers the question:
No, it's no joke, it's business. Maybe the business is too hard for an indie team like SES. And even the concept of EA can't prevent such devs from doing things with their community like SES did with us. They are not the first ones and they will not be the last. For me the concept of EA has failed a few games before Astroneer. But, hope dies last, we say in germany. But it dies. So, no more EA. Such a shame.

You're right, they changed that without information unfortunately. So, now you have more control about it, when you want to use them.
The two upper slots of your backpack have shortcuts (C and V by default, i guess). Put the extenders in there and activate them like a working light.